


Flying Angels' Skies

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Series: Cal Kestis Is The Padawan Obi-Wan Deserved [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game), Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin is Qui-Gon's Problem, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Obi-Wan Gets The Padawan He Deserves, Padawan Cal Kestis, Qui-Gon Jinn Lives, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:29:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26274898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: When she lands on Christophsis looking for the new master that Master Yoda had assigned her to, she's met first by a young ginger man, not too much older than she is, who greets her with a warm smile, despite the dirt covering his face."Oh, hi!" He chirps, dusting his hands off. "Did you come with the supplies we need?""I, uh, I'm here for Master Skywalker? I'm the new Padawan learner."His face falls a little bit. "Oh. That's okay - not your fault. Comms have been on the fritz for the last week or so. I'm Cal Kestis, by the way. I'm Master Kenobi's Padawan."She takes the hand he offers her. "Ahsoka Tano. Nice to meet you, Cal."
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Cal Kestis & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Cal Kestis, Qui-Gon Jinn & Anakin Skywalker, Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: Cal Kestis Is The Padawan Obi-Wan Deserved [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910884
Comments: 32
Kudos: 393





	Flying Angels' Skies

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've fallen in love with Cal Kestis from Jedi: The Fallen Order, and, quite frankly, you should too.

When she lands on Christophsis looking for the new master that Master Yoda had assigned her to, she's met first by a young ginger man, not too much older than she is, who greets her with a warm smile, despite the dirt covering his face. 

"Oh, hi!" He chirps, dusting his hands off. "Did you come with the supplies we need?"

"I, uh, I'm here for Master Skywalker? I'm the new Padawan learner."

His face falls a little bit. "Oh. That's okay - not your fault. Comms have been on the fritz for the last week or so. I'm Cal Kestis, by the way. I'm Master Kenobi's Padawan."

She takes the hand he offers her. "Ahsoka Tano. Nice to meet you, Cal."

"C'mon, follow me. I'll lead you to the Masters."

"Masters?" She cocks her head. 

"Yeah. The 212th is down here with the 501st. Masters Jinn and Skywalker command the 501st."

"Is it just Master Kenobi who runs the 212th?"

"Yup. And me, I guess." Cal winks at her, friendly and warm. His braid is long, hanging down low enough to brush the top of his pectoral muscle. "Obi-Wan was Master Jinn's first Padawan, and the one that was with him when they found Anakin. He's made Master since then, obviously, but I'm his first Padawan. You'll be Anakin's first too, to that makes us sibling students, of a sort."

"I suppose it would." She smiles back. 

He slows down a little and nudges her with his shoulder. "You've never seen battle before, have you? Or really even been on assignment out of the Temple?"

"No." She admits, suppressing the shame she knows she shouldn't feel. There's a reason she's here, and it's to learn. From the Chosen One, no less.

"It can be a lot." He says, speaks low like it's a secret. And maybe it is - the Knights that see the battlefield don't make a habit of airing trauma in public, if they'll even admit they have any. "It'll be overwhelming; not just the sights and sounds, but the _feelings_ too. Maybe it's just because I'm a psychometric, but the pain and the death can be really hard to block out and control."

"Oh." She's suddenly less excited to be here. Then it clicks. "Wait, you can do psychometry?"

He nods, copper hair a little too long to belong to a Padawan bouncing in the wind. "Yup. Not really sure if it's a gift sometimes, especially on the battlefield, but it's there. But I'm warning you now, so you're not so surprised. No amount of warning can really prepare you, but if you get overwhelmed, I just want you to know that it's okay to fall back and collect yourself. The clones will understand, and so will your Master." He smiles at her again. "And if you feel a little foolish approaching your Master about it, I'm always more than willing to talk, okay?"

She nods and smiles back, soothed a little by her sibling-student's relentless optimism and charm. He's sweet, and she's looking forward to getting to know him. 

He claps her on the shoulder and picks up the pace again, leading her through the ruins of several buildings into the remains of a foyer, hidden from enemy view but open to the elements. Standing there is an older man with grey threading his long brown hair, a young man who's dark blonde hair is streaked with gold and a third man with a copper beard that matches his shining hair and frankly massive wings. 

"Masters!" Cal calls, raising his hand to wave at them. 

The three of them turn, but the copper raptor breaks into a warm smile, dropping his crossed arms to face them fully. "Ah, Cal. Did the supplies arrive?"

"Unfortunately not, Master. I don't think our request got through."

The blonde swears vehemently, and Ahsoka's a little taken aback by the ferocity in the words. The brunette cusses a lot more quietly, but the raptor only sighs. 

"I suppose it was too much to hope for. Slick did a number on us." The copper Jedi shakes his head. "Regardless, you're here for a reason, correct?"

"I am." Cal moves to the side, revealing her to the Masters' eyes. "This is Ahsoka Tano. Ahsoka, these are Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi," He gestured to the copper avian, "Qui-Gon Jinn," The older brunette, "and Anakin Skywalker," the blonde who just ran out of swear words. "She said she was sent by the Temple to be Anakin's Padawan."

"What?" Anakin yelped. "I didn't ask for a Padawan! This has to be a mistake. Who sent her."

Cal doesn't appear phased by Anakin's outbursts. He just crosses his arms and levels the other man with an impressively unamused expression. "Master Yoda."

Obi-Wan sends Qui-Gon a mischievous smirk. Qui-Gon openly grins back. 

"There has to be a mistake." Anakin insists. 

"I was sent here to be the Padawan learner of Anakin Skywalker by Master Yoda, personally." She finally interjects, stepping forward. "There is no mistake."

Anakin throws up his hands and storms off. Qui-Gon pleads with his eyes for Obi-Wan's help, but the ginger just laughs. 

"He's your Chosen One, not mine, Master." His smirk radiates satisfaction. "Go on."

Qui-Gon rolls his eyes, but leaves to follow Anakin. She gently taps Cal's thigh, sinking back into herself. He looks down at her and leans down. 

"Is he always like this, or is this just for me?" She asks, feeling small and out of place now that the argument's over. 

"Nah, Anakin's dramatic." Cal assures her. 

"He whined for months when Cal became my Padawan because he 'didn't want a sibling to take care of'." Obi-Wan's smile is approachable and kind, his wings at ease against his back. "Cal's been responsible for saving Anakin's ass more times than our Chosen One would like to admit."

Cal nods in confirmation. "He drags me into the worst messes and then I wind up falling off something."

She winces. "I hope that's not in my future."

Obi-Wan pats the top of her head. "You'll have Master Yoda to thank if it is, young one." He turns his attentions to Cal. "I'm going to see what can be salvaged and issue orders. Would you mind showing her around, introducing her to the rank and file?"

"Of course, Master."

"I'm also going to ask a favour of you." Obi-Wan moves close and runs his fingers through Cal's hair. "Stay close to her during the battle, if you can."

Cal nods, closing his eyes at the touch. "I won't let you down."

"I know." He looks back down at her. "Do your best to behave, and I'll see you soon. May the Force be with you, Padawans."

"You as well, Master." She replies, a little surprised by their affectionate gestures. Cal waves his Master off casually, and the two of them watch as Obi-Wan spreads his massive thirty-foot span and shoot up into the sky. 

"Wow. Isn't he afraid of being a target?"

"It doesn't look like it, but he's actually a really agile and fast target. Even the clones can't keep a bead on him in the air." Cal replies, returning his attention to her. "So, wanna meet the command?"

| | | 

The first one they meet is CC-2224, but when she refers to him that way, Cal places a warning hand on her shoulder. 

"They've all got names." He says, a sudden and terrible gravity to his words. "I don't ever want to hear you refer to them by number."

She shies away, but nods. Cal returns to his normal bubbly self, approaching the Commander in a familiar way. 

"Hey, Cody. How's it looking?"

CC-2224, or _Cody,_ as he apparently calls himself, just shakes his head. "If General Skywalker could keep his feet on the ground, it would be better. Yourself, Commander?"

"Just dandy. Cody, this is Anakin's new Padawan Ahsoka Tano. Ahsoka, this is Cody, Commander of the 212th and Field Marshall for the attack battalions."

"Wow. That's an impressive title." She whistles. 

Cody takes it with good humour. "Just Cody, or Commander, will do, Commander Tano. Otherwise too much of a mouthful."

"That's fair."

Cal hums. "She'll likely be with us on the ground in the next wave, unless Anakin gets his head out of his ass and takes her on."

Cody snorted. "Good luck, Commander. You should probably introduce her to Rex."

"Any idea where I can find him?"

"Over my the guns, sir. He's working to get as many up and running as he can."

"Thanks, Cody."

"Not a problem, sir." He salutes and moves away, called over by another clone. 

He leads her deftly through the ruins of several skyscrapers destroyed by barrage, lifting a massive sunk of duracrete with the Force to reveal a row of three massive artillery canons. Several clones are running around, testing, re-testing and coordinating the strike zones on holomaps. Even from this distance, the plan seems to be to bottleneck the Separatists' troops along an upper street and hold a steady barrage as long as they can. 

"Rex, you got a minute?" Cal calls, hopping up some debris to reach the street that's serving as the canons' balustrade. 

Rex, a clone in a blue-lined kama with a blue-painted left pauldron with strange symbols over the T of his visor, turns to face them. "What can I help you with, sir?"

"Obi-Wan sent me to make introductions." He gestures to her as she lands on the street. "This is Ahsoka Tano, Anakin's new Padawan. Ahsoka, this is Captain Rex. He's the effective Commander of the 501st, despite refusing the promotion. He's also the leader of Torrent Company, the one you'll find yourself in the most when you're on the ground."

"Yessir. We're General Skywalker's painted men." Rex salutes her, but turns back to Cal. "I thought General Skywalker said he was never going to have a Padawan?"

She sinks in on herself again, but Cal just laughs. "Anakin says a lot of things. He's just petrified of the karma that's coming for him, since he was hell on wheels as a Padawan himself."

Rex chuckles. "I can only imagine."

"He's not to much different now, really." Cal winks. "Just reports to the Council by himself when his plan goes south."

"I'm not sad I get to miss those meetings." Rex agrees. He looks back at her. "I look forward to working with you, Commander Tano."

"Likewise, Captain Rex." 

Cal gestures for her to follow. "I'll leave you to the guns. Comm me if you need me."

"Sir." Rex nods and goes back to what he was doing. 

Cal leads her back to street that the droid army will come down to face them. He shows her the barriers the clones will use as cover, and marks out the places that have sniper nests. on a handheld holo-communicator, he shows her the map that the clones were looking at by the canons, and he explains the placements and the coming plans. 

"The major issue is that we suspect they're going to move their shield generator along with the troops, shielding them from the canons. If they get close enough to neutralize the shields, then we're done for." He demonstrates, pointing out the very real weaknesses in their position, despite there being no better option.

For the first time, Ahsoka feels exactly how small she really is, how young. Cal isn't much older than her twelve years, maybe only sixteen himself, but he's been doing this alongside Obi-Wan since the beginning. Despite his generally light-hearted nature, the threat to their lives isn't hidden in the dark of his eyes. 

"Why don't we destroy the generators, then?"

"There's no feasible way to get close to them without also getting captured and killed. A squad or even a recon unit sent behind enemy lines, with the city providing so little cover, is a death sentence." He shakes his head. "The supplies were meant to replace at least some of what was destroyed when the depot was blown. If that had come, the situation wouldn't be so dire."

"Can't Obi-Wan fly there? You said he's too quick a target."

"For a _sniper_." Cal corrects. "A hail of aerial fire, though? They'd bring him down."

"What about the understreets? Do they have sewer systems?"

"The understreets are patrolled by recon droids, the ones that fly. And we don't have an accurate map of the sewer systems, let alone what's collapsed and what's not."

She pulls back, assessing him. "You have a lot of battlefield experience, don't you?"

"A lot more now that the war's on." He answers vaguely. She raises an eyebrow at him, crossing her arms. He sighs, putting the holo-comm away. "I was on Geonosis."

She suddenly understands why he took the time out to warn her about the echoes of dying people - there were many Jedi that didn't return from the sands of Geonosis, and for a psychometric to be there-

"You'll find that Master Kenobi touches me a lot more than other masters tend to with their Padawans." He says, looking out over the street stretching out in front of them. "That's part of the reason. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, and I can't always come down on my own. It's- hard. The brothers are pretty tactile too, so don't be surprised if you see them roughing me up."

"Brothers?"

"Oh, uh, the clones. That's what they call each other. Brothers." He turns back to her. "I get hugged a lot. You'll see it before battle."

"We still need to find a way around the generators."

Cal's eyes flicker upward, like he's hearing something from a distance and is trying to understand it, then back down to her. "C'mon. We're going to meet up with Master Skywalker. Maybe it's something you can bond over, making a plan for the shields."

| | | 

Cal's right. She does bond with Skyguy over blowing up the shield generator. And she feels the deaths of the clones each time one of them goes down. It's worse once they've completed their objective, when she can feel the gaping wounds in the minds of the clones, broadcasting _loss, anger, fear, hurt, pain, death_ all across both battalions. Logically, she knows they can't enter battle and not lose souls to the fight, but that doesn't stop it from assaulting her. 

"It will get better." Anakin assures her as they sit on a rock, staring at the remains of the droids around them. "You'll learn to block it out. The clones project a lot, and they're pretty emotional. But they're good at controlling themselves."

When they make it back to the encampment, they find droves of droids scattered around, white plate armour amongst it. Just like he predicted, she sees Cal being tossed back and forth between brothers who hug him or press their foreheads together. Cal's helping them pull the clone bodies out from under the piles of droids, finding wounded amongst the casualties. He seems very comfortable with them, and them with him. They treat him just like she imagines brothers would, and he soaks up the attention with a laugh and a smile.

* * *

"Ahsoka seems to be settling in quite well." He comments, glancing over at Obi-Wan. 

"Indeed. I think she'll be good for Anakin. It remains to be seen, however, if she'll be just as much of a headache." Obi-Wan tosses him a wry grin. "Good thing we're over here, hmm?"

"Until they need us to bail them out." He snarks back. 

"Indeed." Obi-Wan wraps a wing around him, and he rests his head on the Jedi Master's shoulder, breathing out a long sigh of relief. "You did well today."

"Thanks." He closes his eyes, basking in his master's calm aura, and opens his senses. 

Across the road, he can feel Waxer and Boil, two newly painted men, bickering over rations. He can feel Crys and Wooley and Hope and Blueyes all sleeping, huddled together. He can feel Kano and Rex finish wishing their dead brothers well under their breath, standing silently together. He can sense Cody's mind already on the next assignment, planning for a hypothetical deployment and setting up protocols for the next time he's beyond the reach of the many other units under his control. He sends a wave of calm and clarity over to Cody, who works too hard and too long, and is gratified to feel the Commander recognize the touch in his mind and settle down, taking his meal with his own captains and sergeants with only the wistful desire for real, hot food on his mind. 

Out loud, he laughs because he could go for a hot meal and a half-decent bunk to fall into. They've been sleeping on rocks and fallen duracrete inside the fallen skyscrapers for the last three-odd weeks, and it's been enough to make the _Negotiator_ look like the Chancellor's quarters. 

"What's so funny?" Obi-Wan asks, reaching over to pet his hair. 

"Cody." He replies vaguely, still not quite out of everyone else's heads. He continues, floating around through the heads of the men and floating freely across the ocean of their feelings. Some are nice and pleasant, some humourous and sweet, others are bitterly angry and hopelessly sad. The clones experience the full spectrum of human life, and he's glad he gets to feel it through them - so pure and unrefined, untainted by poverty or greed. All they want is a warm meal, a comfortable bunk, and their brothers. Some of them aren't even all that concerned about surviving, just about making the most of the unknown - but certainly limited - number of days they have left. 

It's a strange place for his mind to be in, a strange limbo he finds himself in. 

Jedi don't walk into battle thinking they're going to die. They don't prepare for the possibility - their mission is to succeed, and they walk in fully expecting they'll do so. It's a part of how they're raised, and he was no exception. Even days like today are hard-pressed to stem that belief - despite the clear odds stacked against them, he'd had faith that they would persevere and make it out. The fact that they had didn't really mean he had cause to think that way, only meant that the five of them were incredibly lucky souls. 

The clones, on the other hand, lived every day as though it was to be their last. They walked into battle fearlessly, less because they planned to live, but because acceptance of their mortality was part of who they were. Their own deaths were always on the horizon, and they were always prepared to meet that challenge. Each battle wasn't just conquering an enemy, it was bending the primordial force of entropy to their will, overcoming their fate through sheer grit. Even brothers like Cody, who were thinking weeks ahead at a time, brushed death aside as one would an obnoxious acquaintance that always nipped at your heels. 

For Cal, the two mindsets - existing simultaneously in his head - melted together into a strange equilibrium that made him dauntlessly mortal. He threw himself directly at the problem, as any Jedi would, but reached for physical affection before excising his emotions into the Force, like a clone. The brothers had taken to him well, willing to roughhouse with him and more than once dragging him into their exhausted puppy piles while on assignment. 

Unbidden, a memory jumped to mind. 

_"What about this one?" Waxer asked, tossing him a pot sherd._

_He breathed out slowly, taking the lingering essence of the Force into himself. "It was an expensive jar of cooking oil, native to a Core planet. It was a wedding gift, but the groom's jealous brother stole it and smashed it."_

_"This one!" Prince tossed him what looked like an engraved piece of doorframe._

_"They measured themselves against the door and compared." He cocked his head. "They thought their grandfather would get mad, but me told them to use the chisel instead of pencil."_

_"How the hell does he_ do _that?" Boil breathed, elbowing Waxer._

_One of the quietest brothers, Hope, pulled off the bracer on his left arm. It was the only piece he had that was painted, and everybody knew that it belonged to the brother that had taken the shot that would have killed the rookie. No one mentioned it, his Jedi politely pretending that they didn't see the breach in uniform standards. He handed it over, though, a quiet and pensive look on his face._

_Cal took it, handling it like fine crystalware despite the fact the thing had seen battle since Geonosis. "Are you certain? You don't have to."_

_"I want to know." Hope swallowed and looked down. "I need to."_

_He took a shaky breath and reached for the familiar, if diminished, presence of Haspar that lingered in the plastoid. "The rookie's too green, can't let him die so soon. Gotta let him scratch the paint, first. I've gotta try, even if we're both dead men."_

_Hope's breath remained even, though he wouldn't meet anyone's gaze._

_He twisted the bracer in his hand and was hit abruptly with another memory, more intense and overwhelming. "Lost all my batchmates, soon as they hit the sand. Faced down the bugs to get back to my unit alone, almost blew off my arm in the process. Gotta make it count, gotta make their deaths count. Keep moving."_

_Hope took back the bracer, hooking it back on with practised ease, gently fingering the massive gouge that marked where Haspar had been hit by a loose rancor in the Geonosian arena._

_He swallowed back the tears, trying to block out the anguish Hope felt at being responsible for Haspar's death. "He wouldn't have wanted you to feel like that."_

_Hope's head snapped up._

_"None of them would." He choked on a sob, the one that Hope wouldn't let out._

_"And how do you know that, Jedi?" Hope bit back, earning a sharp elbow from one of the other brothers - backtalk like that was mutinous - but he kept his gaze firm._

_"Jedi are empaths, meaning we can pick up on how people feel, sometimes even why they feel that way." He paused to collect himself. "I'm also a psychometric, which is how I can get memories from objects and fragments. It's the imprint of the Force in things people touched or interacted with. I get snippets of time from them, like living someone else's memories in my own head."_

_"Does it happen a lot?" Blueyes asked, leaning forward and evidently curious._

_"I train to shut it off, rather than to turn it on." He looked back to Hope, who hadn't dropped his gaze. "I walked the barracks after the battle when they died. I know them all. And I knew Haspar too. I- I have memories of theirs. So, trust me. They wouldn't want you to feel like this."_

_"You don't know what it's like to be a clone." Hope spit, standing. Waxer tried to reel him back in, but Hope violently shoved him off. "You have no idea!"_

_"No, I don't know what being a clone is like." He leaned back in his chair, unwilling to come to blows with a man so stricken with grief. "But you don't know what it means to be a Jedi, either. I don't live your life, don't know what it feels like to have my family perish all at once. But you don't know what it's like to feel them die, to have their memories thrust on you, to live with them forever."_

_Hope collapsed back onto the bench, where Waxer and Blueyes wrapped an arm around him from either side. Hope just dropped his head into his hands, emotions roiling inside him. Cal slid to his knees in front of the rookie, gently tilting his head up by his chin until they could make eye contact._

_"You're not wrong to feel grief and loss." He murmured, cupping the clone's head in his own hands. "But letting that grief go does not take their memory, their meaning, with it. All of that love that turned to pain when they died isn't gone. I know that." He offered a shaky smile, bombarded with Hope's emotions this close, and with this much contact. "I can feel it. But you have to let the grief go, or the pain will never stop."_

_He brought their foreheads together, and Hope bit back a whimper, though he didn't acknowledge the tears sliding down his cheeks. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"_

_"I accept your apology." He pulled back, head spinning in a manner similar to oxygen deprivation. He offered a smile to the clone, taking his hands and squeezing them. "I'm not going to hold anything against you, brother."_

_Obi-Wan's gentle hand on his shoulder snatched his attention away from Hope. "I think that's enough for the evening, gentlemen."_

_Blueyes and Waxer quickly shuffled Hope off, but Crys approached the General cautiously._

_"Yes, Crys?" Obi-Wan tucked him under a wing and he almost collapsed, not realizing how exhausted navigating Hope's mental snare had been. His master was a well of calm and balance, likely having come from meditation to save him from his own hubris._

_"What are you planning on doing with Hope?"_

_"With Hope?" Obi-Wan frowned. "I was going to offer him a transfer to a quieter post, one with less death. Did you have another suggestion?"_

_Crys blinked in surprise. "You're not going to punish him?"_

_"Why on earth would I do that?"_

_"The Kaminoans would have." He murmured into his master's shoulder, where he was slumped in exhaustion. "Beat out every imperfection, like a blacksmith with ore."_

_"Who's head is that from?" Crys stared at him in awe._

_"Commander Colt."_

_Obi-Wan only looked contemplative. "I see. In that case, I'll have to change my approach. Commander?"_

_Cody appeared out of the woodwork, like a ghost that shadowed his master's every move. "General?"_

_"Please reassign Hope, Crys, Waxer, Boil and Blueyes to Ghost Company, would you? And send Hope some paint when we get some in. The paint on that bracer of his is chipped horribly. Tell him I recommend he do the left leg to match."_

_Cody nodded. "Yessir."_

_Two days later saw Ghost Company collapsing, exhausted, onto the floor of the barracks. They'd had to bail out the 501st from a swamp planet, and many of them had shed their armour, scrubbed down and pulled on a new set of blacks before pulling low mattresses off onto the floor and falling onto them._

_Cal had followed them, dead on his feet, and mimicked their actions without even thinking. He woke up the next day, overloaded with the peaceful sensation of rest, blurry and muddled._

_"You're right in the middle." Hope muttered against his stomach, where his head was resting. "If you move, you'll wake them all up.'_

_He adjusted to a more comfortable position on Helix's thigh, tangled his free hand in Hope's hair, and passed out again._

He blinks back to himself, sinking until he's once again alone in his own skin. By the set of the sun, it seems like he's lost the better part of an hour. 

"Feel better?" Obi-Wan asks, lifting his wing. 

"Yeah, actually." Cal shakes himself out, the stress and tension of the day sliding from his limbs. "Kinda hungry, though."

"I hear Cody has food." His master smirks playfully at him. "Might be gone by now, though."

"Guess I'll have to see for myself. Give me a chance to check on Ahsoka too, if Anakin hasn't glued her to him, that is."

"I wish you luck, Padawan. That will not be an easy task."

"Nothing with Anakin ever is." He winks, then drops off the ledge, giving a half-assed salute as he goes.

* * *

Ahsoka goes looking for Cal when they get word that the space battle has been won and transport will arrive as soon as they've got themselves sorted out. She wants to gush to him about the success she had with Anakin the day before, and how Rex congratulated her on her first mission going so well. She also is curious about how he's doing, being a psychometric, and a mean little part of her is interested in seeing what would make his control break. 

She finds him in a pile of clone bodies in a position that can't possibly be comfortable. They're all asleep, since it'd the early hours of dawn and all of these men have been running hard and scared for weeks now, but there are limbs twisted every which way in such a tangle that the only one it's possible to accurately pick out is Cal, more for the navy and leather of his clothes and boots than for the actual location of his torso in this mess. 

"Be quiet." Cal says, despite not moving or opening his eyes. "Reveille is in two hours. Come find me then."

"I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright."

One hand, peeking out from under the neck of a painted clone - Blair, maybe? - waves her off. "All good. I don't get bogged down with it too much anymore. I just don't touch stuff on the battlefield."

She nods. "I'll find you later, then. Oh! They won the battle in space. We should be moving out either today or tomorrow."

He gives her a thumbs up and she laughs lowly, creeping away. 

**Author's Note:**

> I want to write more, but quite frankly, I'm not really sure what I'd do with it. Suggestions?


End file.
